Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we have the details on Google DeepMind's new robotics-focused AI model; we dig into a big win for AI companies that's also a loss for creators; and we learn about Amazon's push to expand quick delivery into rural neighborhoods.

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♊️ More models: Google DeepMind released a new model today, Gemini Robotics On-Device, which can run tasks locally without needing an internet connection. This model builds on the model that Gemini Robotics released in March.

📖 Uh-oh: A federal judge ruled that it was legal for Anthropic to train its AI models on published books without the authors' consent. While that doesn't mean other copyright cases will come to the same conclusion, it's not a great precedent if you care about creators' rights.

🥸 Apple didn't learn its lesson: Apple sent out a push notification advertisement from its Apple Wallet app promoting Apple's original film "F1 the Movie." Apple users weren't happy about the notification, which isn't surprising if you remember what happened after that whole U2 album debacle a decade ago.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: ElevenLabs

🗣️ Can you hear me now? Voice AI company ElevenLabs released a stand-alone voice-generation mobile app today for both iOS and Android. The company said that the mobile app also allows users to access the company's newest text-to-speech model, v3 alpha.

📋 Ongoing investigation: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent Ford an exhaustive list of questions regarding its hands-free driver-assistance technology, BlueCruise. The NHTSA is investigating two fatal crashes involving the software.

🙌 Prime for all: Amazon plans to spend more than $4 billion to triple the size of its delivery network by 2026. Today the company announced increased Same-Day and Next-Day delivery service to rural areas across Iowa, Texas, Delaware, and more.

⚖️ Fair enough: The U.K.'s competition regulator announced today that it's considering a new market designation for Google that would require it to rank search results "more fairly" and offer greater control to publishers on how their content is used. This is good.

🎙️ Crypto queen: At a recent StrictlyVC event, TechCrunch EIC Connie Loizos sat down with Kathryn Haun of Haun Ventures to talk about Haun's strategy of targeting distressed crypto assets, what's going on with stablecoins, and more.

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Around the web

🏷️ AI for sale: Is the key to winning AI dominance just throwing money at it? In recent months, multiple countries in the Middle East have struck up massive AI deals with companies like Nvidia, Google, and Oracle. But these eye-watering deal sizes may not be enough to build a thriving AI ecosystem.

👋 How do you do, fellow kids? Not even AI understands Gen Alpha terminology. A recent research paper, completed by a teenager, found that AI models just don't really understand the hip slang these days like "sigma" and "got ratioed," and you know what? Neither do I.